Trips

The weary traveler is home. Nick and I went to Minneapolis over a two-day spurt to see the Mall of America. First day, we stop in Mason City, Iowa to get fuel and food and also to realize, no thanks to my best friend Kay, that it is the home of Meredith Wilson who wrote the Music Man one of my three favorite musicals. And, the home of a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Kay was a little bit in trouble for failing to mention this, but I forgive you because I just realized that I forgot all about calling you the next day to see if we could meet up, and please forgive me cause that is way worse of a transgression, and I will definitely be visiting soon!!! Okay...anyway. We reach Minneapolis and find our hotel. It's a small room. With a really small bathroom. I mean, no elbow room. A shower, a sink, a toilet, a hairdryer that if you tried to use would probably result in a broken elbow and concussion. It was that small. So, naturally, we hurried out of there and headed to the Mall. Huge. Enormous. Gigantic. Will we be able to find the car again? large. We entered through Bloomingdale's which was really cool. Then sort of stared in awe for a little bit and walked around. And then we decided to go to the aquarium. Of COURSE they have an aquarium! It's the largest underground aquarium, in the world, I think. And we saw fish and sharks and sea horses and sea turtles and THEN, we petted sharks and rays. I got a sticker that says I touched a shark! It was flippin' cool! Awesome! Then we walked around some more. Found a store devoted to all things Irish, where Nick bought me a history of the last name Regan. Found out that one branch of my royal family (yes, I'm Irish royalty!) kinda, sorta kicked some Danes asses. Nick gave me a look cause he's part Danish. Hehehe. We ate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp company. Good food, but really greasy. So greasy, I really can't think about eating greasy food for awhile. But good. We bought postcards, walked, saw the Legos center, played, walked, walked, and oh, yeah, walked some more. Went into Sephora which was amazing. Went to the Apple store where I drooled over the laptop I want. Walked some more. Basically it was a walking trip, and I'm glad to sit on my couch now that we're back. But it was so cool! And I can't wait to see what we'll plan on next. Maybe Chicago?!
Other news: Nick got a scholarship to go to Canada for a library conference. Oh, and he's planned his train trip to Prague from Berlin this summer and his mom is excited! It also means we're driving down at the end of May to drop him off, see my niece graduate 8th grade and then he'll head to the exciting European continent, and I'll head to Iowa to work. Anyway, that's my story.